Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF Page B

see about letting you sleep a bit.” Brannis leaned closer and added in
a low voice, “I can see now why necromancy is forbidden. I cannot imagine
anything dead would look less horrible than you do right now.”
    Despite his fatigue, Iridan could not help but smile
and chuckle a bit. The playful swat that he aimed for the back of the grinning
Brannis’s head missed badly, and drew an amused snicker at his expense from the
few men nearby.
    “Sure, Brannis, enjoy this now. I will be getting you
back once I have …” Iridan paused for a yawn. “… gotten a good sleep in me. I
will not be forgetting! Maybe the next wolves I bring into camp will be doing
their business in your tent.”  They had been friends since childhood, so
Iridan was freer than most to joke with the battalion commander.
    He looked at Brannis out of the corner of his eye and
tried to feign a menacing look. This drew a good-natured laugh from everyone,
as Iridan was hardly in any condition to look menacing. Brannis nearly toppled
his friend with a hearty clap on the back and helped him to a seat and dawn
feast.
    *
* * * * * * *
    “Goblins!” one of the sentries screamed.
    While the goblins were as silent in daylight as at
night, there was no denying that they had given up some advantage in stealth
with their dawn raid. One of the sentries had spotted them.
    “To arms! Form a shield wall just inside the camp
perimeter,” Brannis ordered as he plunked his helmet onto his head and secured
the chinstrap. “Keep the shields low and remember that the goblins cannot reach
above your shields, only under and between.”
    The knights were gathering behind the rapidly forming
wall of men with shields and spears, each wielding a pair of “goblin
swords”—whip-thin rods of steel meant to overcome the goblin advantage of
quickness. Only Brannis, carrying Massacre, was differently armed. And, of
course, Iridan, who was neither armed nor armored, though he had been given a
chain shirt identical to those of the commoner soldiers.
    Poor Iridan ,
thought Brannis, no sleep for him after all .
    The young sorcerer had shunned the armor he had been
given, planning to rely solely on his own magic for his defense. If the goblins
were half as smart as everyone claimed, they would pick him out of the crowd
easily enough anyway, and he preferred to be free of the awkward armor to
better cast his spells.
    “Indreithio anamakne ubtaio wanuzar pronedook,” intoned Iridan.
    Brannis spared a glance over his shoulder to check on
the spell Iridan was casting. He was holding his arms skyward, fully extended,
with his fingers slowly weaving an intricate pattern in the air. Brannis
recognized it as a shielding spell, and from the way Iridan was gesturing, one
meant to form a barrier overhead to prevent the goblins’ thrown weapons from
penetrating, like giving a house a sturdy roof to keep out the rain.
    Brannis was just behind the front lines when the first
of the goblin missiles sailed in. He shouted for his men to keep down behind
their shields and not to raise them up. All but a handful managed to put aside
their instinct to bring their shields up to cover their heads.. A second wave
of thrown spears and daggers quickly followed the first and with few targets
presenting themselves, those few went down quickly amid a storm of hurled
blades.
    The sound of the goblin sorcerers’ spell chants were
drowned out by the sudden war cry of their first wave of infantry, a horrible
chattering cacophony bringing to mind a flock of startled chickens in an
echoing canyon. Yet the spells were cast—heard by the defenders or not—and a
blast of lightning shattered the ranks of men to one side, while two bolts of
white-hot aether hammered into Iridan’s shielding spell, illuminating the
transparent barrier for a flickering moment. The shield appeared almost to
buckle, but it held and the aether-bolts dispersed.
    The goblins pressed their advantage where the
lightning had cleared a hole in